In the image reproduction system, e.g. a printing system, the printing step of the print job is prepared by a controller of the image reproduction step as well as the finishing step. The controller may be capable of preparing a finishing step by an inline finisher or a finishing step by an offline finisher out of a large diversity of inline and/or offline finishers.
Examples of finishing steps comprise: stacking, stapling (specified with number and position), scoring, folding (including different folding patterns), cutting, die cutting, trimming, punching (specified with number and position), drilling, book making, booklet or saddle stitching, ring binding, spiral binding, coil binding, laminating, perfect binding, coating, embossing, and the like. Finishing may be in-line, on-line and/or off-line of the image reproduction system.
A print job may involve a finishing step which is time consuming or uses expensive resources. A proof print job related to such a print job is therefore expensive. A print job specified with a finishing step may be impossible when the appropriate finisher is out of order or not even present inline in the image reproduction system, i.e. an offline finisher. In such cases a digital trigger from inside of the image reproduction system or from outside of the image reproduction system may be established that the intended finishing step is not to be performed.
However, notwithstanding such a case the user still would like to get a feel for a quality of the intended but not to be performed finishing step as much as possible.